Peter

prosper

Sister cities are for junkets only. Business is not the business of local council. Council should be focused on basic services, zoning, roading, and sewage and water. The last two they have subcontracted out so they are not even doing that.

Rich Prick

themorgan

I agree this looks like little more than a recipe for pointless junkets, but it’s a bit tough to suggest Auckland should only have the same number of sister-city relationships as, say, Taupo, when Auckland’s population is larger than every other “city” on your list combined. If they can all have 2, we should be able to have 26, and we have fewer than that.

woodburner

The Sister City relationships tend to be useful for opening doors, particularly in Asian destinations where heirachal connections carry a great deal of weight. Other than that, it is very difficult to realise benefits from these relationships. However, from experience many of these relationships exist on paper only and are not actively promoted or funded.

In regards to funding, although often ratepayer funded, I have seen several SC relationships funded via a trust in which key beneficiary’s (eg business clusters) of the relationship fund which is in turn “administered” by the local authorities for the sole purpose of giving credibility or prominence to the relationship. This, to my mind is quite a good model and tend to give the best return as it is more targeted.

Pongo

She is proving to be a little bit useless to be honest, maybe the new CEO might help but so far Dalziel has achieved little aside from keeping The Press onside.
Hard to see the benefits of a sister city when ours is still a bit broken and needs a bit of attention.

jp_1983

Jack5

Dalziel hasn’t shaped up so far as Christchurch Mayor. We have seen in Christchurch another layer of senior bureaucrats.

Then there is the PR layer on everything. One of the initial responses to the suburban flood basin was to send out questionnaires to householders in the region. When the latest storm was headed for Christchurch one response was a slot on TV showing how the council was preparing.

In the meantime the council does not yet have consent processing up to speed.

Council staffs were once led by specialist accountants and engineers, and the councillors were often retired or near-retired business people or trade union organisers. Now councillors are often politicians or ex media people, often from radio. While local body staffs have mushroomed you can bet the proportions of engineers, tradies, and accountants to total staff have fallen.

Pongo, what would a socialist Mayor have to do to earn the ire of the “Peoples Daily”.
The Press came after Parker because he hid his socialist leanings, Dalziel is the “Peoples Mayor” so that is a get out of jail card.

Tarquin North

I can’t believe Whangarei doesn’t have half a dozen sister cities. Our leaders are experts at wasting money. They’re currently trying to set us up for a $30 million Hundertwasser arts centre and they can’t even get the roading right.

Bad__Cat

Tarquin, I looked it up, we only appear to have one (Redmond, Oregon, USA) should be nice at this time of year.

BTW, have you noticed the thundering silence since their survey indicated a 2:1 preference to can Hundertwasser? I’m afraid they are scheming to try and get their pet project through by some other means.

noskire

$30,000 for the hunderwaste flags at langs beach.
When there are no footpaths and the toilets are lit by one old dim 60w bulb.
Loved the banner some wag placed between the flag poles a few summers back.
First time I realised what the stupid things were supposed to be.
One of the most beautiful beaches in the north defaced by some council knob with to much power and a healthy disrespect for the value of the rate payers cash.
Almost as good as kaipara council and the fifty mil they lost on an engineers wet dream.

TM

When I was in the UK I knew some people who lived in a village with a sister village in europe. As they were on the committee (or whatever) they had the odd trip there, but they were billeted in local homes and had to pay for all travel. They should do that here.